The top-selling un-reviewed album this week is not Live at the BBC by The Beatles, it's The Hits by Garth Brooks. The reason I am not reviewing Garth Brooks is that he has chosen to prevent his entire catalog from being on any music streaming service except Amazon Music, and I don't have access to Amazon Music.

According to that article linked above, his stance seems mostly reasonable: most/all streaming services probably underpay artists for the music they serve to customers. The whole world of music for $15-20 a month is an incredible deal and as a consumer it's amazing. What's not reasonable is his choice of Amazon. Amazon is a notoriously bad company to work for as an employee (every word is a link to a different article about unsavory Amazon business practices). The article says that Brooks chose Amazon because they're also a retailer. I guess that as long as a consumer can choose to buy a physical album from a retailer it's okay if the same retailer streams his music? But that physical album would be shipped by underpaid, overworked, and exploited employees largely for the benefit of one of the richest people on earth. Are underpaid warehouse and delivery drivers better than underpaid artists? Brooks' choice of Amazon seems to ignore all the bad things about Amazon and suggests that it really is only about money: the money Amazon gives to Brooks.

My household used to pay for Amazon Prime, but we cancelled it and don't miss it. I admit to occasionally still buying things from Amazon, but only when I absolutely cannot find it anywhere else. I try to buy things online from specific retailers: bicycle stuff from bicycle retailers, electronics from electronics retailers, etc. I do see my own hypocrisy: I listen to music at very low cost (that pays low royalties) but also am trying to not support very low cost shopping (that pays low wages). I think the bottom line is I have basically zero market power; my choices are imperceptible to these affected groups. I don't matter. However, a big star like Garth Brooks has power, and he's chosen to use his power in what appears to be a mostly self-serving way with morals at least as flexible as mine.

I could pirate the album, but I don't care enough about Garth Brooks to do that. It's not available at my local library, either. Instead I'll drop down to #7 and listen to some Beatles, an outcome I don't dislike.

This album is mostly covers performed by the Beatles for various BBC radio programs. On the one hand, I generally disfavor covers unless they do something the original didn't. In this case, what's been added is that these covers are performed by the freakin' Beatles. The Beatles got their start (including going back to The Quarrymen days) playing covers in clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany. By the time of these BBC recordings they were surely more polished than those early days, but I'd like to think that these songs have some of the quality and energy of the Beatles before they got world famous.

You should definitely check out this album. The only asterisk is that it's over two hours long with 56 songs and a few spoken tracks. Perhaps take smaller bites of the album with breaks so you may listen without becoming overwhelmed.

After two weeks of Christmas music, the decidedly non-holiday Vitalogy by Pearl Jam hit #1 after three weeks on the chart.

I listen to Pearl Jam relatively frequently, but not that often to Vitalogy. It has a few good songs, like Better Man and Corduroy, but overall it's nowhere near as good as Ten. Of course, that's not exactly fair because Ten is one of the best rock albums ever, and one of a few that defined grunge rock.

Overall, I'd recommend checking it out, but if you don't like it as much as Ten, that's fine.

Following last week's Christmas album, this week we get the album with songs everyone hears (perhaps too much of) this time of year, Merry Christmas by Mariah Carey. Hitting #3 thirty years ago, this album has sold over 18 million copies since then. To mark the importance of 30 years, Mariah Carey released a 30th Anniversary Edition which I've linked to above.

My feelings about this album largely mirror how I feel about the Kenny G album last week. At the right time and in the right way, I'm completely fine with Christmas music. Christmas music can help to set a mood and that's great. I would never pick this nor any other Christmas music to actively listen to, but in the background, it can be just the right thing.

I have no doubt that this album will continue to get plays for decades to come. The songs on this album have a permanent place on many Christmas song playlists. Between Thanksgiving and New Years, you have my permission to play it, but not necessarily listen to it.

Released in late November 1994, Miracles: The Holiday Album by Kenny G hit #1 as the post-Thanksgiving holiday season set in. Other than for this album, I do not purposely listen to Kenny G. According to last.fm, I listened to a Kenny G track 12 times before I listened to this album for this blog post. I'm fairly certain that those earlier plays were part of some algorithmic mix.

Luckily for Kenny G, the album buying public does not like the same things I like and he has been very successful. This album alone has sold millions of copies. Likely because this one was so successful, Kenny G has recorded three more holiday albums since this one.

As far as this album goes, I don't really have a problem with it when it's played at the right time (after Thanksgiving and before New Years), and for the right reasons (as background music). If you were to listen to this album any other time of the year, or listen to it actively, you're crazy. It's holiday mood music, and that's fine, and that's all it will ever be. Include these songs in a holiday mix and hit shuffle/play. That's as much mental energy you should give this album (which is fine!).

Please note that I'm not a grinch! I'm getting into the holiday mood! I recently purchased a copy of Festivitas and it now decorates my dock. And it will continue to decorate my dock until no later than New Years, at which point it will be turned off.

Hitting #4 on debut (which is as high as it will rise), Tical by Method Man is a bit of mid-90s hip hop that I never really paid attention to. Method Man is a member of Wu-Tang Clan which has been very influential for the last 30 years. I never really paid attention to Wu-Tang clan, either.

Before listening to this album, I had eight plays of Method Man on last.fm. It's up to 17 plays now, and I think it will stay there unless he gets thrown into some auto-generated mix I listen to. I like some hip hop, but even thirty years later, Method Man doesn't do much for me.

For the third time in four weeks, an album debuts at #1. Hell Freezes Over by the Eagles marked their return to recording and performing together after a fourteen-year break up/hiatus. The album is in two parts. The first four songs are new material recorded in a studio. The remaining eleven songs are all live versions of older songs. This is the second Eagles album I've reviewed; I did Eagles Live almost 14 years ago.

Unlike The Dude, I do not hate the f-in Eagles, man (*). According to last.fm, I have listened to the Eagles over 1800 times. I haven't listened to Hell Freezes Over very much, around 40 times as of this writing. I think that's because there's only four new songs and the rest are live versions, and in general I prefer studio versions of songs. The new songs are pretty good, both Get Over It and Love Will Keep Us Alive charted well on the radio. The live versions are interesting, with different instrumentation and arrangements than the studio versions.

Overall my recommendation is to listen to the Eagles, and listen often. Hell Freezes Over isn't bad, and perhaps worth a listen, but their other albums are much better.

(*) I made a Big Lebowski reference in my previous Eagles review, too!

Recorded 31 years ago (to the day), MTV Unplugged in New York by Nirvana hit #1 on its first week on the charts. This was the first Nirvana album released after Kurt Cobain's death in April, 1994.

According to last.fm I have listened to this album over 160 times, so I know it quite well. In one sense, since I know this album so well, and have heard it for 30 years, listening to it now gives me no surprises. In another sense, this is the kind of album I truly look forward to during this project, the albums that bring me back to being a teenager. Obviously when I listen to albums from 30 years ago that are mostly new, it's more interesting, but a good fraction of the more interesting albums I don't like, and they're more work for me.

Nirvana is one of the most important bands of the last 35 years. If you haven't already heard Unplugged, I'm surprised, and you should go about fixing that right away. Listen on headphones or in a quiet room so you can pick up Cobain's mutterings between songs. Too many albums I review belong in the dustheap of history, Unplugged is the exact opposite, and will remain relevant for decades to come.

Released the day I turned 15, Bedtime Stories by Madonna is in my opinion not one of her stronger albums. It's not a bad album per se, but compared to her other efforts, it's nothing special. Prior to listening to the full album, I think I had only heard two songs off of Bedtime Stores, Secret and Take a Bow. I'm pretty certain that it's been years since I heard either song on the radio. Looking at the most played Madonna songs played on Tidal and Spotify, the highest ranked song off this album is in the 30s, which shows that most of the public agrees with my opinion.

I actually do like Madonna, and I encourage listening to her music. This album can be ignored unless you really want to explore the full catalog of Madonna.

Debuting at #1, we have another movie soundtrack. I've reviewed soundtracks before and in a few ways it's different.

As far as I can tell, all of the big songs on the album (Murder Was The Case, What Would U Do?) appeared on other albums released before this album. Previous chart-topping soundtracks featured songs only available on the album.

Another difference is the album is longer than the movie for which it's named. The movie is only 18 minutes long, while the album is over an hour long.

As I looked through the track listing, I took a double take at the artist on the 6th and 11th tracks, Jewell. I had to check it wasn't Jewel. Both Wiki pages have "Not to be confused with Jewel(l) (singer)." at the top for obvious reasons.

Overall, I find this album fairly boring. Like the Above The Rim Soundtrack I previously reviewed, most of this is typical mid-90s rap. I think this album can be left to history.

Hitting #8 on the charts after 33 weeks, Tuesday Night Music Club is Sheryl Crow's debut album. According to last.fm, I've listened to 12 Sheryl Crow tracks in the last 18 years, the majority off this album for this blog post. Clearly she is not one of my favorite artists. I don't think her music is bad, but I just don't choose to listen to it. I suspect the few random plays in the past were because of some algorithmic mix I was listening to.

The album does have two big hits: Strong Enough and All I Wanna Do, which I have heard before. I'm not entirely confident that I've heard any of the other songs on this album before.

Long story short, TL;DR, yadda yadda, my opinion of Sheryl Crow hasn't changed. I'll probably never listen to this album again. Finally, I'd rather go to Tuesday Night Racing than listen to this album.

I've listened to a fair amount of Smashing Pumpkins over the last 18 years, but before now I had never listened to this album. This album is actually a compilation which might be why I never checked it out until now. Perhaps another reason is that this album is not one of their most popular. This week it hit #4 but in the coming weeks it plunges down the order pretty quickly.

The only song off the album that was released as a single was a cover of Landslide originally by Fleetwood Mac. That cover did quite well and I remember hearing it on the radio 30 years ago, and I'm pretty sure I've heard it on the radio since then fairly consistently.

According to Wikipedia, this is one of the better reviewed Smashing Pumpkins albums. I think that the songs in isolation are all pretty good, but being a compilation the cohesion between songs isn't the best. I don't think I'll listen to this album all that much going forward mostly because other Pumpkins albums are better.

In the summer of 2001 I spent a couple months participating in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) in the Physics Department at the University of Georgia (UGA). UGA is in Athens, Georgia, which is a wonderful little college town about two hours away from Atlanta. There are many things I remember about my time there. Having grown up in the Bay Area and it's notoriously cold summers, that was the first summer I spent in a genuinely hot place. I brought a bike and I spent a fair amount of time exploring the countryside around Athens — and this was before smartphones with GPS! The group of REU students I was in and a few faculty members took a trip to see a Space Shuttle launch, which was amazing.

As part of my preparation for spending a summer in Athens, I made a bunch of MiniDisc recordings (I had a Sharp MD-MS722), including the R.E.M. catalog. R.E.M. were students at UGA and got their start in Athens. I wanted to listen to their music while spending time in Athens.

Included in my MiniDisc library was Monster which shot to #1 in its first week on the charts. Monster doesn't have as many hits as Out of Time or Automatic for the People, really only the first track, What's the Frequency Kenneth got big radio airplay.

This is one of those albums that makes the 30 Years On project fun. Listening to this album brings me back to being in Athens, being in a new place, doing new things. It's a great album and I recommend it.

Sitting at #3, Rhythm of Love by Anita Baker made zero impression on me. Nothing negative, nothing positive, nothing. That's all I really have to say about it.

Debuting at #1, From the Cradle by Eric Clapton is 100% blues. This album was released on the heels of "Tears in Heaven" which likely contributed to the popularity of this album. According to this fan ranking site it's one of his best albums. While other people may find it great, it doesn't make a big impression on me. For me, Slowhand and Unplugged are much more interesting. Certainly, From the Cradle is well done, but it just doesn't make me feel the things some of his other work does.

My recommendation is to check it out, you may like it, or not.

It takes a rare thing for an album by three(*) opera singers to make the top ten in album sales. It takes a cultural moment where an opera singer, or singers, is widely enough known to garner the kind of attention required to sell enough albums to make the top ten. It also takes a certain kind of album; a whole opera would not be able to sell as well as a "greatest hits" collection, which is what this album is. This week, The Three Tenors in Concert 1994 is in the seventh position on the charts. It looks like this album will rise to as high as fourth in sales, which in 1994 is a fair number of copies sold.

Curiously, the only streaming services that appear to have rights to this album are YouTube (and its eponymous music service), and SoundCloud. Notably Spotify and Tidal do not have it. Luckily I have access to YouTube Music so I listened to it there.

As mentioned above, this album is mix of "greatest hits" of opera and popular music. I am not a big opera afficionado, but even I can tell that these tenors are far more comfortable singing opera than popular songs. The opera songs are clearly very well sung. Unfortunately, the popular songs, like My Way, are halting and impacted by the fact that english is not these singers first language. I think that if they had stuck to singing only opera's greatest hits, it would have made the album better at the expense of its popularity. But as it is, the popular songs are not good. If you care to, listen to Sinatra's My Way, and then My Way off this album to hear what I mean.

Honestly, it appears that even the rights holders to this album are content to let this album fade into history. Streaming services are where the listeners are, and by keeping it off of most services, they are making it almost impossible to find. If I didn't have access to YouTube Music, I would not have put in the effort to listen to it. I think that you, dear reader, can safely leave this album in the past.

(*) There are four men on the album cover. I guess the fourth is the conductor of the orchestra. Still, it's incongruous to have "Three Tenors" and four people in the picture.